Cartoons Tutorial

If you, like me, have tried making cartoons, you will probably have noticed that get a nice crisp image, like you see on TV is not very easy at all. I don’t have a very steady drawing hands, and my attempts at using pens, inks or paints have always been slightly frustrating. Every slight twitch can cause an accidental stroke that will ruin a picture you’ve spent hours working on. And getting consistent colour with physical media like paints can be tricky too. For these reasons I now use computers to produce my cartoons.

Not only do you have the luxury of an undo tool to remove those accidents, you can also produce smooth clean colour. But there is still a problem. It can still be hard to get your lines smooth, because even with practice you will find that your average mouse or drawing tablet is not as precise as a pen or pencil. This is where vectors come in handy. They can produce the smooth, black lines that give the cel shaded look, without the hassle of constantly redrawing lines with the airbrush and eraser.

As you can see, the image with the drawing tablet is often much rougher. You can get lines smooth using this technique if you wish (as I have done here), but it requires what feels like endless touching up. This is why the rougher drawing look is becoming an increasing familiar in web cartoons (and I’m not saying that it doesn’t look good, it is just a different style to the crisper cartoons that I prefer to make).To get smooth lines on a computer, by far the fastest way is to use the vector tools.

I make most of my cartoons on Photoshop, because I like the option to be able to sketch with the airbrush, as well as use vectors. But cartoons can be made as effectively in Illustrator. The main advantages of Illustrator are that any image you make will be infinitly scaleable and more suitable for printing, and the lines you make will be crisp. If you use Photoshop, you may need to do some touching up on the lines you create.

The first step is to create a new layer above the white background layer that is there by default. You will want to use many layers for your cartoon. This allows you to apply and change colours of individual layers, and alter objects independently (just as the transparent sheets in cel animation allow). This is good for allowing tweaking of the image, and also great if you wish to animate the cartoon later. Note that Imageready, that comes with Photoshop, uses layers to produce its animation.

On this layer, draw a sketch of what it is you wish to draw using the airbrush. Don’t worry too much about how good this sketch is. If your not happy with it, you can reduce the transparency of the layer its on to 50%, create a new layer above it, and then sketch on this new layer, tracing from the original sketch. Use a different airbrush colour to make the new lines distinct. You may have to repeat this process several times, until you are happy with the sketch, adding new detail with each new layer. Once you are satisfied, hide all layers except the top one, and convert the lines to black (you can do this using one of the tools found in the “image” menu, under “convert...”, such as “hue/saturation/lightness”)

At present, you will probably have a sketchy image, with slightly rough lines. To improve the quality of the image, you can now use paths. Using the techniques covered in the previous tutorial on vector graphics tools, go along each line creating a new path. You will probably have to make several paths to complete the while image. At this point, you can use the fine control the paths give to get each line in precisely where you want it. Once you have them in roughly the correct place, hide the sketch layer (by clicking on the eye next to it in the layer panel) and make the final adjustments.

To add the strokes, create another layer, and select a path. Clicking the “stroke” button in the paths panel (the little circle outline at the bottom) will create a stroke around the path based on either the current brush selected, or the default brush if you don’t have an appropriate one selected. To change the default brush, right click on the the path, and select “Stroke path…”. This means you can create a line based on the airbrush (using the current brush size and foreground colour), paintbrush, blur, smudge, or any similar style tool. For our cartoon, you will probably want to use a fine airbrush, setto black.
	Repeat this with each path in the image. It is often best to create a new layer for each separate element, so you can edit them individually later if you need to. Using thicker lines on paths around the edge of the object, and thinner ones for detail inside it, can create a nice effect.

Had you used a true vector programme such as Illustrator, your corner points and end points would be squared off nicely, and would look much sharper. However, in Photoshop, this won’t be the case, and your lines might look a little rounded at the ends. This is fine much of the time, but if you want to create pointy teeth for example, you will need to sharpen them up.		The same paths in Illustrator
	Using a fine airbrush, extend the corners or ends slightly. Then, using a fine eraser, eraser the rounded tips off carefully, to leave behind sharp points, as shown here.
This shouldn’t take too long, and makes a big difference to the picture. Note that you can also use it give a nice tapered effect to the ends of your strokes.

The next step is adding colour. Create a new layer below the ones which contain your strokes, to make it easy to colour between them. You can either use an airbrush or pencil brush to colour the image, by painting on this layer, or you can use the “fill path” button (the black circle on the paths panel) to fill them for you. Note that fill path will only work reliably on paths that are closed (those where the end point joins the start point). You can also fill with preset patterns using this method, by changing the options in “fill path…”

After colouring in, you can use the airbrush to add extra detail such as shading, or in this case fish scales, to finish off the image. As you can see, the finished picture is smooth. Its pretty quick to use vectors in this way, and can be used to create professional looking image. Most of the images on this site have been made using a similar technique